


Bywater Street Rules: A Tale of After the Circus

by Anglocat



Category: Smiley's People - John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types
Genre: (If you call this porn), Cheating, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Femdom, Infidelity, Marriage, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anglocat/pseuds/Anglocat
Summary: Ann's latest return home is for a purpose--to salvage or end her marriage.  Read the tags, and if any of the listed items offend, do not read.  For mature readers only.
Relationships: Ann Smiley/George Smiley
Comments: 7
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> C.P.Snow describes the unhappy marriage of his protagonist Lewis Eliot as, despite all the pain he endures, "nonetheless a kind of home." What is at the root of George's long tolerance, even after Karla's fall, of Ann's very public infidelity? One possible answer.

Once he managed to fit it into the cylinder, despite the waning light, the key turned in the lock. He cursed his precarious balancing of his latest treasure—a shabby looking folio that was in fact a unique variorum edition of the poems of Hoffmannswaldau with emendations in the poet's own hand—against his small suitcase, his umbrella and the damned newspaper, which he should have left well alone, until he’d delivered the folio safely to his desk. No fool like an old fool, Connie would have said—poor, dear Connie, gone just as she had predicted, and not all that recently now. How the days flew in retirement.

Just this once, though, George Smiley’s luck was in, and he managed to get the door open, the treasure safely stowed, and didn’t even stab himself with his umbrella. Breathing only a trifle heavily, the tubby former spymaster strolled into the kitchen to brew some tea, only to stop dead. 

A handbag, on the countertop.

Not just any handbag, either; hers. 

Ann’s.

“The demon Ann” to Connie, and to who knows how many of his friends and acquaintances.

He’d never changed the lock; it was, after all, her house as much as it was his (indeed, possibly more hers than his, as the Sercombe treasury had brought it within his—their—grasp). How many times had he wanted to be free of her? How many times had his heart yearned for her, a painful yearning that held him transfixed, unable to move, or act, or even decide? With Ann, he had always been a case of—how had Eliot put it? Ah, yes, of course: 

“Between the idea  
And the reality  
Between the motion  
And the act  
Falls the Shadow.”

They met occasionally. Even stayed under the same roof, sometimes for weeks at a time.

He was always nervous on these occasions, and yet—he felt a little more alive when they arose. The hardest part for him was always the first meeting, the moment when some idiot hope would paste an idiot smile on his face, and he would actually believe that she had come home, full stop. His hopes, idiotic hopes, he reminded himself, were always dashed.  
Best get it over with, he thought. Show nothing, he reflected; be civil, welcoming, but not warm. Best approach, give nothing; act like she was a defector, or a joe who had blundered, but found a way home—pleased to see them, of course, but hardly rapturous.

He took the stairs up to the drawing room; not there, other than a trace of her scent. Bedroom? Almost certainly.

As he trudged up the stairs and put his hand on the doorknob, the old horror flooded him. What if she were not alone? What if he had, after so many years, actually stumbled upon her in flagrante? He was about to turn around and slink away, when she called out, “Just me, George; come in.”

He turned the knob, and the door swung open. The bed was still made up, a few suitcases strewn about the room, still packed up. In her favorite chair, a large red and gold wingback with a matching ottoman, stretched luxuriously out like a cat that in its feline way knows itself to be a potentate, Ann’s eyes fearlessly met his, her crooked smile the same as when she had been a secretary at the Circus, oh, so very long ago.

She had been beautiful then, and just at the sight of her, comfortable, book beside her forgotten as she gazed at him, his heart pounded as fiercely as it had when he asked for her hand. She was beautiful still, her light hair framing her aristocratic face, those astonishing cheekbones just as they ever had been. She was dressed in a creamy turtleneck, an elegant hacking jacket with matching skirt (they must have cost the earth! George could not help but think) and a glossy, expensive pair of black boots, reposing on the ottoman.

“Hullo, Ann,” he greeted her, not certain of what to say next.

“George,” she replied with a small nod, “it’s nice to see you.”

“And you,” he answered formally. 

“George, dear?” 

“Yes, Ann?”

“You’re still wearing your hat.”

He laughed, then, his hand floating upward and tentatively touching the brim. 

“You might like to remove it,” she suggested with a small flick of irony.

“D’you think it’s safe?”

“I feel quite confident, George.”  
“Well, then, I suppose I can take the risk,” he removed the bowler, and gingerly placed it on the dresser.

As always when confronted by her, he scanned the room for the best place to perch. With Ann already in the spacious wing chair, George had a choice of a plain wooden chair or remaining standing. He leaned slightly against the wall, and was about to speak, when she beat him to it.

“George, I came here to see you. We must talk.”

“Must we, Ann?” A weak parry, one he would have despised even in mouth of the late, unlamented Ricki Tarr.

“Yes, George, we must,” her voice was surprisingly soft, kind, even. “I’m tired of this dance of ours, and it’s time for a change.”

George waited for the next sentence, the one featuring the word “divorce,” but Ann did not say anything else.

Damn it, he was blushing. His move, then.

He heaved a mountainous sigh.

“What kind of change do you envision, Ann?”

“Poor George. Life’s such a puzzle to you, isn’t it?”

He was quite certain she had said these words before, though he could not place them precisely, not while he so anxiously awaited her answer to his question.

“Did you never wonder why I chose you to marry, George?”

“I had ventured to hope that it was out of love.”

“It was,” she assured him, “but why did I come to love you? Did you never think about that, George?”

“I didn’t dare,” he admitted.

She smiled. “We’ve never spoken of the most important things between us, George, I’ve outraged and scandalized you and you’ve accepted me anyway.”

He nodded, but remained silent.

“I want you to understand why I loved you, and why I still do. And if it’s not enough for you—you can throw me out tomorrow morning. But will you trust me for tonight?”

He heard his own voice replying: “Yes, Ann, I’ll trust you for tonight.”

“Good. Now strip. I want you naked.”

“You—you, want me--”

“Starkers. Right now. All the way down. Glasses too.”

To his astonishment, he obeyed. Nerveless fingers untying shoe laces, removing socks and hanging up clothing until he had complied with her demand. Spectacles removed and safely stowed, he turned to face her, her eyes raking him, then focusing just below his sagging tum as the blood rose to his cheeks, and elsewhere.

“Feeling judged?” She asked, a Sercombe to a peasant.

“No,” he lied.

Her eyebrows raised superciliously, and he flushed all the more. Worse, his arousal grew, and her eyes turned dark, her smile wicked.

“On your knees.” It was delivered as a command, her voice, her eyes absolutely hard. As was he, to his mixed shame and longing. He knelt.

“Good boy,” and he thrilled to be praised by her. “Now I’ll give you a choice, here," amusement in her tones, "You can shuffle over to me on your knees, or you can crawl. But you must do one or the other.”

He was frozen, immobile. She snapped her fingers, and it was like a gun’s report. Before she spoke again, he dropped from his knees to all fours, and crawled the length of the room, until he was crouched by the ottoman, her boot-soles inches from his face.

“Closer,” she ordered, “rest your face against my boots. Soft, aren’t they? Isn’t the smell of good leather wonderful? Breathe it in, George. Really breathe it in.”

The closeness to her, even if only to her feet, was comforting. The scent of the boots was heady, even as the observer in him had already noted that they had not been worn outside before today, no, never outside—the soles were virginal.

As was he, if his trembling was any indication.

He could not help but stroke the uppers of her boots with his cheeks, his forehead, his nose and lips.

“You may kiss them, if you like.” Her voice was scratchy, taunting, contemptuous. He shivered as he began to kiss the glistening black leather, a small moan emanating from his lips even as he abased himself before her. Between kisses, he murmured her name.  
Her laughter was cruel, the condescension, apparent as her booted foot caressed his face, and then, that so perfect unmarred sole pushed him away, and he overbalanced, falling to the floor at her feet.

“Remove the ottoman,” she instructed him, and he hurried to obey. When he pushed it away from her, she snapped her fingers again, pointing to the floor where it had stood. He crawled back to her, and rose to his knees there.

“Ve-ry good, boy,” she drawled, her smile predatory, her eyes alight, her legs akimbo.

“Now place your head under my skirt, and bring me off with your tongue.”

He knew of such things, of course—his work had inured him to pretty much every form of sexual expression—but the Lady Ann coarsely ordering him to pleasure her as if he were a servant, one with no limits to his duties—he complied, of course. He wanted to, needed to. 

When he arrived at her sex, crouched beneath her skirt, he found that she had removed her panties. His tongue met her flesh, instead, and he began to lap at her folds. She ground herself into him, and as he lapped—

\--No. 

She wouldn’t, surely?

She couldn’t be this cruel, could she?

Through her skirt, she fiercely rapped her knuckles on his skull. 

“I did NOT tell you to stop!” She hissed the words.

The excitement that had fueled him remained inexorable, despite his agony. He hesitated, his brief interval of happiness seemingly shattered, as she pulled her skirt up, exposing him to the lighted room.

Her fingers fisted in his thin hair, as she forced him to her sex.

“We need this, George. I need it, and you do too. Do as you are told, or get out of this room!”

Puzzled, hurt, frightened, George Smiley obeyed his wife. As he did so, the taste of her treachery began to matter less, and her growing pleasure ever more. For the first time in many years, Ann Smiley screamed her husband’s name in ecstasy, not once, but many times.

When they were both completely spent, Ann slipped the skirt off, and cuddled his head on her thighs. He wept then, releasing tears that he had held back since the race-car driver who had first taken her from him so many years ago. All of her lovers, known and unknown, who had wounded him; his tears washed him clean of their poison, even Haydon’s, worst of all of them. He kissed her thighs and clung to her.

Ann held him until all of the tears were shed, and all of the heartbreak sloughed off. When she thought he could hear her, she cupped his face in her hands, as he still knelt before her. “I told you once before that I’m all you’ve got, George. There isn’t anything else. But then, you’re all I’ve got. There isn’t anything else for me, either. We can’t change who we are, but we can face it, and love each other through it all.”

She rose, towering above her husband, looking down at him, with softer eyes than he had ever seen in his life.

“Come to bed?”

Without his glasses, he looked young, vulnerable. 

He smiled without pain or irony, and said simply, “Shouldn’t I help you off with your boots first?”

Her responsive smile, tentative at first, lit those beautiful eyes with hope.

The next morning, Ann woke. She was alone in their bed, behind a firmly closed door.

Oh, George, she thought, I’ve driven you away at last. She wondered if she could have been wrong, after all; she had reasoned that he would not have stayed with her so long if he hadn’t needed what she could not help but give him. 

Did she know him so little? 

Should she tumble out of bed and fly down the stairs, to promise (no doubt futilely) yet again to reform?

The door swung open, and George, in his dressing gown, a long-ago gift from her, entered carrying a tray. He set it down, and brought her a bed tray, which he gently situated just so. She watched his hands delicately position the tray, tending to her comfort. He set out the platters, and removed the covers, revealing her favorites: eggs and bacon, toast, marmalade and Egyptian honey, and strong coffee.

With a subfusc smile that made her eyes dance, he announced, “Breakfast, milady!”

“Thank you, George,” she coolly replied.


	2. Toad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ann reminds George that she is in charge. Always.

Her return to Bywater Street had transformed his world.

On, not entirely, of course—he had plenty of time for his scholarly interests; in fact, Ann not only encouraged his research, she had goaded him into writing up his thoughts, and submitting them to scholarly journals. Seeing his name in print was a bit jarring, but Toby Esterhase and Oliver Lacon had come through for him, and had insulated him from any old enemies. Peter Guillam had come over from France to ensure George’s safety, and had pronounced Lacon’s and Esterhase’s work Good. His only reservation was the presence of “the Demon Ann,” as he called her, reminding George that Connie (from whom Peter had appropriated the sobriquet had never forgiven her, and Peter had not either. Dinner in Bywater Street had gone off surprisingly well, as both Peter and Ann had controlled their mutual dislike, for his sake.

Peter had been surprised that George had cooked the meal, and that it had been of such high quality. Understandable, George reflected. How was Peter to know that George had not simply taken Ann back, he had unconditionally submitted to her whims. One of which was that he should prepare their meals, and wait on her at table. Six months was not a long time, but, under Ann’s scornful eye, his culinary prowess had exponentially improved.

She had mercifully suspended that rule for Peter’s dining with them, and was careful never to make him humble himself to her in front of anyone else. But she relished his flushed face when she made him eat after she had finished her meal, or content himself with her leavings. She had yet to make him eat from a dish on the floor, but he suspected she was planning such a humiliation, and in his secret heart, he both longed for and dreaded it.

As to her lovers—far fewer than they had been in the past, but occasionally he would discover her infidelities during their own intimacies. When he had asked her why, she had smiled, and answered, “you need to know who’s in charge, George. You have limits, and I don’t.”

She saw the desire in his eyes at her response, and chuckled wickedly. For once, she had let him take her that night, and his ardor impressed her more than she let on. Subsequently, she would sometimes let his jealousy build, and then let him take the lead, if only briefly. By the end of their every coupling, George was more aware than he had been of who was mistress and who was subordinate.

He was giddy with desire so often these days, and that desire was so often slaked! More than even in their first year together, George was intoxicated with her body, and her dominance over him. 

She had even brought back the nickname she had used during that first year, addressing him often as “toad.” He had hated it then, though he had acknowledged the aptness of the simile. His pouchy face, large, glaucous eyes, and tubbiness fit the label. 

He didn’t hate it now.

He was usually on his knees to her when she called him toad, trembling with need of her while she teased him with sarcastic barbs, and piercing questions. When he submitted to her crueler whims, he was rewarded as her “wicked toad” or her “lover toad.” The humiliation aroused him more than he could have imagined. 

More and more, she addressed him as "toad" about the house. Never in public, never with company. But when they were alone together, she was Lady Ann Sercombe, and he her pet toad. He found that the name enabled him to let go his inhibitions, to accept her rule over him. He was not George Smiley, the former spymaster, or even George Smiley, the scholar of German poetry of the Seventeenth Century. He was merely her servant, toad; obedient, humble, devoted to his mistress.

He lost himself in her.

Her affairs? He waited for her some nights, sick with jealousy and fear. But she always came home, and after he submitted to her as he had that first night, they would couple, on whatever terms she chose.

Always, though, she would hold him all through the night.

He was unsure what it meant about them separately and as individuals, her need to master and humiliate him, and his equally deep need to submit to her. Ann, with her aristocratic contempt for bourgeois convention, laughed his concerns away.

“I love you, toad,” she would say, “you and no one else. You’re mine.”

“And are you mine?” He would softly ask.

“No, George. That’s why it works for us. I can’t bear being owned, and you, my dear, you deeply need it.” 

Another year past, and he had accepted their roles. What had previously seared him was now an integral part of his life, a life as her adoring obedient, humble servitor.

Her toad.


End file.
